


Journey to the Center of Your Heart

by cricket_aria



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Capture, Fade to Black, M/M, Post-Game, non-Dawn of the New World Compliant, short-term major injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24582901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: Zelos wants Lloyd to show him everything he can of his world as they travel together. Unfortunately, there are parts of his world that aren't exactly happy that another is now butting its way into the planet.
Relationships: Lloyd Irving/Zelos Wilder
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	Journey to the Center of Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Exile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/gifts).



> Raine clearly never received her Maiden costume here. :-)

When Lloyd went out into Altamira to find Zelos he figured that he’d find him flirting with any woman who would stay still long enough for him to try a line on her, but instead he was sprawled on a bench with his legs stretched out in front of him watching the roller-coaster as it looped along its path. Lloyd tried to ignore how glad he felt to be wrong, reminding himself like he’d been doing ever since they’d started traveling together alone that it wasn’t his place to care, while he plopped down beside him and said, “Man, how can you look that bored in, like, the funnest place we ever go?”

“Eh, you get used to it,” Zelos replied with a shrug, “And I’ve been here enough times to be pretty dang used to it, Bud.” He straightened up then offered Lloyd a lazy half-smile. “You aren’t keeping your promise to me here, Lloyd.”

“I… what?” Lloyd asked, forehead scrunching up as he tried to think of what promise he’d ever made that he could be breaking. The only thing he could think of was, “You can run away if you want, Zelos. I’m not trying trap you with me or anything.”

Zelos shot him an exaggerated eyeroll and snorted, “Your first thought is seriously that I want to ditch you? Man, have a little faith in me here.”

“Okay, so what am I missing? I can’t know if I’ve done something to bug you if you don’t say it. You’re not as obvious as Colette, you know?”

“Hey now, give our cute little beauty some credit, from what I heard she once did a good job of keeping secrets from everybody except the one guy too dumb to fool.” Zelos crossed his arms behind his head, his elbow bumping lightly against Lloyd’s shoulder, “But don’t worry, you aren’t gonna need to shove a cup of tea at me and claim it’s coffee or something. You promised me we’d be seeing the world together, Buddy. So far since we left your home we’ve seen what’s left of Ozette, Altessa’s place, and now Altamira. You aren’t showing me anything I don’t know better than you do, weird landscape changes aside.”

“I mean, since Ozette is right nearby I thought that we should stop and make sure that Altessa was okay since Tabatha’s somehow a goddess now. And we had to go to Ozette since I did promise Presea that I would help her see if there was anything left in her home to move to Regal’s place. It’s gonna be weird enough for her to get used to being taken care of here without anything to remind her of home.”

Zelos snorted, though he sounded more fond than snide when he said, “Yeah, I look forward to hearing how the Bryant servants trying to ‘take care’ of her goes if they’re expecting a normal twelve-year-old kid. I’m pretty sure she’s really _at least_ as old as me, you know.”

“Hey, be nice, it’s gonna be up to her how much she wants to try to have a normal childhood and how much she wants to make them take her seriously.”

“Ha, like any one of us got to have a normal childhood. She’d not gonna fit in with the group anymore if Regal coddles her too much.” Lloyd was happy to see there didn’t seem to be anything sharp in the back of Zelos’ eyes at the joke.

“Hey, my dad raised me totally normally!” he protested without any heat.

“Bud, your dad’s a dwarf. You were literally the _only_ person in your world other than him to get raised like a dwarf.” Zelos seemed to think for a second then snickered and added, “You weren’t even raised like a normal dwarf, since you went to school with humans! Face it, you’re in the screwed up childhood club with the rest of us, you just happened to like yours.”

“Okay, well, what about Regal? I mean, I don’t really know what he was like as a kid, but he’s never said anything weird?”

“Regal is insanely rich,” Zelos said, like that was an explanation for how he fit into the pattern all on its own.

“Okay, whatever, then Presea’s new chance at a childhood will be screwed up because she’s being raised by someone insanely rich too, okay? But I had to keep my word to help her get settled in there, you know? Dwarven vow number 26, a promise made is a promise kept!” Lloyd turned his head to grin brightly at Zelos, “And that means to you too. If you want to see more of the places that were part of Sylvarant we’ll get right on that, okay? I’ll think of somewhere we haven’t taken you yet, and that’ll be our very next stop!”

* * *

“ _Buuuuud_ ,” Zelos groaned, draping himself over Lloyd’s back as they stood in the entrance to the city, “When you said you’d think of somewhere new to go I thought you’d come up with something more interesting than a crack in a mountain.”

“Hey, Asgard has some interesting stuff in it… kind of. The Professor loves it here!” Lloyd protested half-heartedly, not really able to dredge up a Raine-level of enthusiasm for a bunch of old ruins. When deciding where to go he’d considered Triet instead, figuring that Zelos might at least enjoy the way the women dressed around the oasis and a little part of him wanting to pull Zelos into the fortune teller and see once and for all if maybe her predictions went both ways in spite of that obvious enjoyment. But he decided to take Zelos’ request to see some place new to heart, and go somewhere they’d really never stopped in again at all since they’d started traveling together. Asgard had been the closest of those places. 

“Well then, you should have invited her to come along with us! It’s always charming to see her get enthusiastic!”

“Zelos…” Lloyd reached up to clasp his forearm, “Professor Raine isn’t here right now. You don’t need to pretend it isn’t a little freaky when she goes into ruins mode.”

Zelos loosened one arm from around Lloyd’s shoulders to scoffingly wave off his words, “Lloyd, one day you’ll realize that it’s always good to see a beautiful woman finding joy in something.”

“Well, if you’d rather travel with a beautiful woman finding joy in things than me, I’m sure she’d be happy to take you on a grand tour of all the ruins we’ve seen,” Lloyd teased, trying to ignore the twist in his gut at the offer, only to end on a small choked noise when Zelos’ arms closed again crushingly tight for a moment. 

“Don’t say anything crazy there, bud. I picked who I wanted to stick with, don’t think for a second that I’m second-guessing that,” he said, more seriously than Lloyd thought a comment meant as a joke deserved, then he released him to saunter away and eyeball one of the merrily turning windmills. “Okay, enlighten me! Why was this hole in a rock the place you found worthy of being the first stop from Sylvarant on our grand world tour?”

“There… aren’t really that many places you’ve never seen?” Lloyd admitted. “I wish I could take you somewhere as cool as the amusement park to show you how amazing our piece of the world could be, but Sylvarant was the one in decay, you know? We don’t really have anything like that. I might be able to wrangle a dragon ride for us nearby, but is that really interesting after how much we’ve flown around on Rheairds?”

“Oh, Lloyd, buddy, I hope you never try getting a new career as a tour guide if that’s the attitude you bring to it. Talk up how you wanted to show me the breathtaking view,” he stepped up to the edge of the cliff edging the town and gestured over it, even though the view directly across from them was another rising mountain wall instead of any breathtaking vista, then he turned to wave at the windmill he’d just been looking at, “or the rustic charm!”

“ _You_ like rustic charm?” Lloyd asked incredulously.

“Not in the least!” Zelos cheerily admitted, “But it sounds a lot better than ‘Sorry, my world just sucks worse than yours,’ huh?”

Lloyd had to admit that Zelos had a point. It wasn’t as if he didn’t love his world, hadn’t fought fiercely for it, but it was just hard for him to imagine there was anything in it that someone like Zelos would really find all that interesting even if he thought that he wanted to see it all. Just because it was something different didn’t mean that he’d find it something _fun_. And that just wasn’t being fair to Sylvarant, or to Zelos.

“Okay, come on,” he said, starting to make his way up the first of Asgard’s many flights of stairs. “In the name of talking the city up for you let’s go see the ruins, and I’ll tell you the story about how Professor Sage danced a for a ritual here.”

“The woman who clung to the wall when the band started playing at the party Princess Hilda threw for us? Now that I would _love_ to hear.”

“Whatever kind of dancing you’re thinking of, this wasn’t it,” Lloyd said firmly at Zelos’ eager tone. As they climbed he saw the city’s mayor standing above them on the way to the ruin platform and frowned slightly, memories of the past running through his head as he half-expected to be barred from climbing higher again. “Hey, you guys haven’t closed down the ruins again, have you?” he called out as they approached.

“No, no, tourists are welcome as usual,” the man said quickly, as if he’d never planted himself in front of a group and refused to move before. “I was only stopping for a breather on my way back down, age starting to get to me you see.” He looked Zelos up and down as moved out of the way. “You… I could see your hair practically from the peak of the city. Would I be right in thinking that you are the Chosen of Tethe’alla?”

“Tethe’alla’s just the name of one of the moons now, Guy, nobody’s the chosen anything of it,” Zelos waved the question off airly, then when they’d walked past said in a tone too low for him to hear, “Nobody asks a question like out of nowhere unless they’re thinking about what they can get out of you. Leader of this town a little mercenary, Lloyd?”

Lloyd shrugged, unconcerned. “This place always was a tourist town. He probably just wants to try to get you to endorse it to former Tethe’allans.”

“Ah!” Zelos pushed a hand through his hair and struck a tragic pose, “A trendsetter’s work is never done!”

Lloyd laughed and planted a hand on his back to push him further up the stairs, enjoying the feel of the warmth beneath his fingers while he had it, “Yeah, yeah, your life is the hardest. C’mon, we’ve got stuff to see. I bet you can’t wait to laugh at how badly I remember the Professor’s lecture about what makes the place famous, though I did have a bomb to worry about while she was giving it!”

“Dancing beauties _and_ bombs? See, Lloyd? You know how to make the place sound interesting after all!”

* * *

Lloyd didn’t realize until the next day that he should have worried about the Mayor’s interest in Zelos after all. If he had, even if it were just to get annoyed on Zelos’ behalf that he might be planning on using him somehow, he might have chosen to move onto the next town instead of settling into Asgard’s inn that night.

For the rest of his life he would wish that he had.

It wasn’t even as if he didn’t notice anything at all strange going on, he caught people here and there sneaking glimpses at them, heard whispers behind their backs. And if he caught all that than he _knew_ that Zelos must have as well, he was always more aware than he usually let on of everything going on around him. But they were both used to stares and whispers, Lloyd from traveling with the Chosens and Zelos from being one, so nothing about that seemed unusual.

So they rented a room without a care, fell heavily asleep, and never heard it when the door cracked quietly open and a brazier of burning herbs was slid in with them. The smoke that soon filled the room sent them deeper into sleep than ever, until there was no chance of their waking until it wore off no matter what happened.

When it finally did Lloyd woke slowly, his head pounding with so much pain that it was hard to even bring up the will to winch open his eyes at first. It was only the sound of Zelos suddenly swearing close by that finally drove him fully into consciousness. “Hey, could you keep it down? I’ve got a—” he started, only to cut himself off when he suddenly realized that instead of their room at the inn they were trapped inside a small cell carved into the stone of the mountain. “W-what the heck?” he stammered.

Zelos kicked the bars making up the one wall that wasn’t stone, then yelped and almost immediately afterward winced and clutched his head at his own loudness. “Some bastard must have drugged us and dragged us in here,” he managed after a moment, still grimacing. “Top notch first pick for a visit, Bud.”

There was no actual heat to his sarcasm, it sounded more reflexive than anything else, but Lloyd still sank into himself recognizing the truth in his words. “Zelos, I’m so sorry. You know I would never have brought you anywhere I thought was dangerous.”

Zelos managed a small laugh and plopped down onto the end of the bed Lloyd was lying in, resting his hand on Lloyd’s head, “Don’t start lying to me now, Hunny, our whole relationship has been a stream of you dragging me into dangerous places! I’m happy to follow you into hell, Lloyd, it’s just nice to know when that’s where we’re going.”

They lapsed into silence after that brief exchange, Lloyd figured Zelos’ head must ache just as badly as his own did which didn’t leave them in a state for much long discussion. Zelos’ hand remained in it’s place on Lloyd’s head, absently stroking through his hair, the light touch helping to soothe the pain away. Part of Lloyd wanted to tell him that it felt nice, or to offer to trade places once he started to feel a bit better, but the rest of him worried that doing that would only make things awkward between them. When Lloyd opened his eyes to look up at him Zelos was leaning against the wall with his eyes shut, his hand the only part of him moving, so he thought that Zelos might not even really be paying attention to what he was doing.

With no windows or clocks in the room to give them a sense of the time Lloyd wasn’t sure just how long they remained like that before the door to the room the cell was built into finally cracked open. When Lloyd turned his head to see who it was the Mayor himself entered the room, followed closely behind by a few more town elders. The first thing he did when he came in was focus in on Lloyd, his face flickering into a sneer for only a moment when he saw his position before fixing into an ingratiating smile. “Before anything else, please, let me apologize for treating one of our Chosen’s companions so poorly. I assure you that you will be released with no harm done as soon as our business is completed, but we knew that if we let you be you would try to seek out your… fellow traveler.” 

“Lemme tell you, Mr. Mayor, if you’re trying to force me into seeing all the best sights before we leave, you picked the wrong way to go at it,” Zelos said, in the fakely jovial tone that Lloyd hadn’t heard from him in awhile. Hearing it now Lloyd was surprised that he’d ever been fooled by it himself; while he wasn’t going to be egotistical enough to to think Zelos was _completely_ open with him, Lloyd didn’t think he was with anyone, he'd gotten used to Zelos being as open to him as he ever was with another person and now the difference in his tone was obvious. “I would have been totally happy to just accept a tour.”

“Yes, yes, see us as a joke, as your entire _world_ does,” the Mayor said, any attempt at pleasantry dropping from his demeanor. “Look down on the poor backwards world that you Tethe’allan’s jammed your own cities into.”

“Wait… what do you think happened when the world’s merged?” Lloyd asked, confused.

“Isn’t it obvious? They can claim the world was ‘restored’ to its true form as much as they’d like, but the truth is clear! They couldn’t stand that their world was going to begin to degrade once ours was restored, manipulated our Chosen into not completing her journey, and when she discovered a way to bring the Mana back into our world in spite of their treachery they forced themselves into it!”

“Wow, Guy. Just… wow,” Zelos said, sounding genuinely shocked at that line of reasoning. “You’re reaching so hard you could touch Iselia.”

“Say what you will, but how can you deny it when you look at our cities compared to yours? _We_ are the ones who were meant to be granted restoration, and yet our towns remain small and barren next to yours.”

“That’s just because we haven’t had time to build up yet!” Lloyd shot back, “ _Everywhere_ is going to become so much better now, but it’s not like new buildings and farms are going to shoot out of the ground on their own!”

The Mayor sighed, looking pityingly at Lloyd. “Of course you say that, you were part of the group that they manipulated. But don’t worry, Boy, when the false chosen is gone, and only ours remains, Martel’s eyes will no longer be clouded by confusion and she will recognize which lands she must bless.”

Lloyd tried to shoot upright, only to be stopped by Zelos’ hand on his head suddenly pressing down, his other suddenly wrapping around to push down on Lloyd’s chest at the same time. It was an answer to whether he was aware of what his hand was doing at least, Lloyd supposed, though that was no longer the most pressing question on his mind. “ _Don’t_ , Lloyd,” Zelos said quietly, his eyes fixed on the group across from them. “Don’t give these bastards the satisfaction of watching you slam yourself against the bars trying to get at them.” Though Zelos kept his expression fixed in a narrow glare, against him Lloyd could feel how tense his body had become as he raised his voice again, “Man, you’re making me wish I’d grown up in Sylvarant, if your Journey of Restoration’s not supposed to have a corpse at the end. Mind you, if you change your mind and go after that cutie of ours instead, Lloyd and I will both be coming for your heads.”

“Like they could do anything to hurt Colette,” Lloyd told him, doing his best to sound as unfazed as Zelos, though he couldn’t keep a tremble out of his voice. “If she were here those bars would already be a pile of scrap.”

“We will not be moved by your trickery, False Chosen! We know what we must do!” a woman behind the Mayor cut in, apparently unable to bring herself to wait for the group’s mouthpiece to cut them off.

“Yes, we know it well. We discussed it through the night, and though the anniversary of the day the Tower of Salvation appeared would be a more proper time—”

“No, the day the Tree of Mana appeared!” one of the others behind him cut in, only to be immediately overlapped by another of them saying “The Lady Chosen’s birthday,” all clearly cycling back through an old argument.

“ _Although some other time would be more fitting_ ” the Mayor shut them all down firmly, “we realized that the longer we hold you here the more likely it becomes that someone will come looking for you. Tomorrow night is the full moon, I’m sure that’s an auspicious enough occasion for the ritual to work.”

“ _What ritual?_ ” Lloyd snapped, and even Zelos’ hand on him couldn’t stop him from lunging up to glare at them this time, though he minded his words enough not to throw himself at the door trying to get to them. “There’s never been two Chosens in the same world before, nobody but the Desians even knew there _were_ two world’s until just a little while ago, there’s no rituals about anything to do with any of that! You’re just making things up! Is your answer to _every_ problem to sacrifice someone?”

The Mayor looked at him with cool eyes, any attempts at seeming obsequious to one of Colette’s followers vanishing when Lloyd didn’t happily bow down to their plans. “You’re still just a boy, whatever journey you’ve made,” he told him, “There are times the world demands blood, the people of Asgard understand this even if you’re unable to. I’m sure that whatever hold the false Chosen has on your mind will die with him, and you’ll soon see that the sacrifice we’ll making for Sylvarant was all for the greater good.”

* * *

They didn’t stay long after that, filing back out again as suddenly as they’d appeared. As soon as they left and there was no risk of anyone stopping him Lloyd began scrambling at the bars of the cell, trying to find any weakness that might offer them an escape. “Why did they even bother to _tell_ us what they were going to do?” he snarled, almost more angry than he’d ever been, as he shook at a bar looking for give.

Zelos snorted from where he still sat on the bed watching him, “You’re too good a guy, Bud. We’ve come across how many assholes while traveling around, and you haven’t picked up yet that some jerks just want to see you feel dread?”

Lloyd squeezed his eyes shut, dropping his head against the bars, “They did the same thing to Aisha, didn’t they? They made her walk around for days knowing they were going to force her to die.”

Lloyd heard Zelos finally push himself to his feet behind him, walking up and pressing his hand comfortingly against the back of Lloyd’s neck. “No clue what you’re talking about, Bud, but I assume it has something to do with that little ‘solve every problem with a sacrifice’ comment you made to them?” His forehead dropped to the back of Lloyd’s head, a quiet laugh stirring Lloyd’s hair, “Y’know, I’m starting to get why you put off giving me the grand tour of the parts of Sylvarant I haven’t seen yet, if ‘barren old town where they murder folks’ is the kinda thing I was missing out on.”

Lloyd was glad that Zelos couldn’t see the way his face screwed up with pain at the reminder that it was his choice to come to Asgard, though the way Zelos’ body felt warm and relaxed against his back, a far cry from his usual exaggerated embraces when they were in a similar position, told him that Zelos wasn’t placing any blame on him at all. “There are good people here too, I promise. Mostly good people. It’s not… a bad place.” His hands slowly slid from the bars as he’d failed to find even the tiniest hint of weakness. “Zelos, you haven’t been hiding getting strength like Collete’s from your crystal, have you?”

Zelos shook his head slightly, his face moving against Lloyd’s head without leaving it. “Man, I wish I could reveal I was keeping that one up my sleeve, but in case you’ve forgotten, Hunny, you were holding onto the thing for me the only time I spent enough time around folks who could teach me how to unlock that trick. Pretty obvious you haven’t either, huh?”

Lloyd raised his hand, looking at the crystal glittering in its back, “Any help on this one, Mom? …Mithos?”

“Oh, like that brat would move himself to save me even if any of him is in there,” Zelos said, laughing again.

“Zelos, how can you be laughing right now? Why aren’t you trying to help me find a way out?”

“What, you don’t think it’s funny too, Hunny? I finally thought all this Chosen bullshit was behind me, we were gonna go out and see the world and I was going to have a _life_ , and now some superstitious schlubs from the sticks will be the ones to off me right when I’d really rather not.”

Lloyd whipped around, hardly even noticing that they were so close that turning left their faces almost pressed together. “You are _not_ going to die, Zelos,” he said fiercely, “Don’t you _dare_ give up after everything we’ve been through.” 

Zelos’ eyes were so soft that that painful clench that had been in Lloyd’ chest ever since hearing the Mayor’s plans twisted even harder, and his smile didn’t seem at all forced as he softly said, “Lloyd, they’ve got us locked into the side of a mountain and they’ve already shown us that they know how to knock us out out hard enough to keep us from moving. It’s not like I’m not going to try to hold my breath as long as I can when they bring out whatever the hell they drugged us with, but with how good the chances are that I’m not walking out of here I kinda want to focus on making sure that at least I can stomp out any last regrets.”

Then what little space there was between their faces vanished as he sealed his lips to Lloyd’s.

Lloyd froze, too shocked to respond to the gentle movement of Zelos’ lips against him or the tentative probing of his tongue, but when Zelos pulled back a moment later to search Lloyd’s face with a disappointed glint in his eyes Lloyd managed to stammer out, “But… it was always a joke, they way you hung all over me, wasn’t it? Zelos, you flirt with _every_ girl we meet. I can’t just be a replacement for a pretty girl because I’m the only person here.”

“Trust me, Hunny, I don’t have a powerful enough imagination to be pretending you’re a pretty girl, so if that’s what you’re worried about shove that thought away,” Zelos told him firmly, raising his hand to brush his fingers gently down Lloyd’s cheek and looking satisfied at the reaction when Lloyd couldn’t help but lean into it, “I flirt with all the girls, but I decided to go on this journey with just you, that didn’t tell you something? I’ll admit that I did plan to take things a lot slower than this, but some jerks planning to slit my throat tomorrow sorta wrecked that plan so fast it’s got to be.” He bumped his forehead lightly against Lloyd’s, seeming to relax further with every moment that Lloyd didn’t pull away from him, and his voice lowered to a whisper as he confessed, “If you tell me you don’t want me that’s fine, but you’re the first person who ever liked every piece of shit part of me that they’ve seen. Don’t think for a _second_ that I don’t really want you after that.”

Lloyd thought suddenly, as he tried hard not to most of the time they spent together, of the fortune teller back in Triet. The surprising burst of happiness he’d felt when he’d realized Zelos was the only person that she could have been describing for his soulmate, how it had shifted just as quickly into sour disappointment when he realized that it must not go both ways with how obvious Zelos made it that he would happily take every woman in both worlds as his soulmate. He’d thought he could be content with the way things were anyway, especially once Zelos chose to stay by his side even after everything was over. He’d thought it was okay if Zelos wanted to endlessly flit between girls, as long as Lloyd was the only person he chose to stick close to.

He hadn’t imagined that a man who’d never found a moment he thought was inappropriate for flirting could just have been waiting until he thought the time was right.

Slowly, with no experience of his own to guide his actions, Lloyd raised his hand to curl it into Zelos’ hair, pulling him impossibly closer. “I never said I didn’t want you,” he breathed before offering back a kiss of his own.

He would save him, Lloyd thought, he would save him, he would save him, it pulsed across his mind with every increasingly fast beat of his heart. But, in the meantime, if Zelos wanted to make sure that if everything went wrong that at least he hadn’t missed out on this then Lloyd would gladly let himself be pulled back onto the bed. From what the Mayor had said they had another full day to search for a way out, they could spare some time to get rid of any potential regrets.

* * *

He’d dozed off afterward, to the sound of Zelos’ tired laugh as he’d murmured to him that it was okay for them to live down to stereotypes just this once, and woke to the sound of a loud explosion and the horrifying realization that once again he had the familiar agonizing headache that came from the Mayor’s drugs and the faint scent of burnt herbs in the air.

Horror that turned into outright panic when he realized that Zelos was no longer in the bed with him.

He shot upright, mindless of his own bare body, eyes frantically darting around for familiar gleaming red hair. Had someone been waiting just outside the door all along, listening for them to fall asleep so they wouldn’t even be able to try fighting off the drugs and could be kept knocked out until the last instant? 

It seemed terribly likely, because while there was a red-head just passing over the remains of a familiar-looking bomb that was placed in the wreckage of the cell door, it was the wrong one. “Harley?” he asked, then looked past to the two people beyond him, “Linar? Aisha? Where’s Zelos… where’s the guy they had with me gone? Don’t you dare tell me it’s too late.”

All three of them looked miserable as Aisha quietly said, “We’re so sorry, Lloyd, they kept the door too tightly guarded for us to get through until they’d already taken him away. We came in the moment we were able, but they’ve taken him to the dias.”

Lloyd surged the rest of the way from his feet, only thinking to grab for his pants when all three looked away. “I need to get up there,” he said, ignoring the agony in his head as he dragged just enough clothing on to be decent. “They— They’re not just going to kill him, they’re making up some stupid ritual for it. That takes time.”

“Yeah, we figured you’d feel that way,” Harley said, offering up a pair of twin swords to him. They were nothing like the quality of Lloyd’s own Material Blade pair, wherever it was the Mayor and his cronies had locked them away, but they would be more than sharp enough to face a group of evil men who had probably never faced a real fight in their lives. 

Lloyd looked at the three of them as he accepted the blades, remembering how he’d promised Zelos that there were good people in Asgard, and managed to give them a smile, “You guys, thanks.”

“Are you kidding?” Harley asked him, “It’s only what we owe you.”

“Not that we wouldn’t have done it anyway,” Linar quickly added as he opened the door of the room for Lloyd, revealing a single knocked-out guard left outside, “even without what you did for Aisha.”

“And it finally let us put learning how to build those bombs to good use!” Harley gave the unconscious guard a quick kick as they passed, apparently as disgusted by the group at Lloyd was.

“We may not be any use to you in a fight,” Aisha told Lloyd as they turned to the nearest stairway, “but let us at least show you the fastest way there.”

“Thanks,” Lloyd offered again, wanting to just start running but recognizing the the place they’d come out wasn’t a portion of the city that he knew and not wanting to risk picking stairs that would take him to the completely wrong peak.

They didn’t talk much from there, saving their breath for running up the stairs as fast as they could. He wouldn’t be too late, Lloyd promised himself, there was no way he could be. Zelos couldn’t die when he’d gotten so little time when he wanted to live. He was still telling himself that just when they finally reached the part of Asgard that was familiar to him, just in time to hear an agonizing scream echoing down from the highest point of the city.

He’d have recognized the voice anywhere, but the tone was entirely new.

Lloyd hadn’t been able to produce his wings since the one time just after defeating Yggdrasill, part of him thinking that maybe it was only the last bit of Mithos’ soul passing over him with the dust of his Cruxis Crystal that had made them appear and that he’d never be able to do it on his own. But at that sound they burst out of his back once more, launching him into the air with the force of his need to get to the dias _immediately_. His mind wasn’t even clear enough to be amazed at his own speed, just wishing that he could be faster still instead.

Then he was in the air above the dias, the men and women gathered upon it gaping up at him as he stared down at where he could see Zelos lying in the center, still mostly naked but for a cloth cinched around his waist that was slowly going red. He was twisting in agony, his arm stretched out beside him.

His arm stretched out _beside_ him.

The man holding the hatchet next to him seemed to have realized the horror of what they were doing too late, staring down at the blood that had splashed across him with a shocked expression on his face. It was only at the other’s shouts when they saw Lloyd that he looked up, and numbly said, “We had to remove the crystal to make sure he wouldn’t become a monster…”

Then anything else he might have said was cut off by Lloyd slamming bodily into him, any thought of his using his swords or showing any sort of finesse wiped out by the enraged desire to just push him _away_. “He has a _key crest_ , you evil, evil, idiot!” Lloyd howled with rage. “That wouldn’t have helped if he _didn’t_!” 

He wanted, more cruelly than he’d ever wanted anything, to keep flying forward until he’d shoved the man straight off the side of the mountain for what he’d done. The only thing that stopped him was the small part of him deep down inside that was still aware of how Collette and their other friends would react if they ever heard he’d done such a thing.

That part was still almost overwhelmed by knowing that Zelos would probably have no problem at all with revenge.

He twisted around, sword flashing, and they were cowards every one because for all the grand talk about how they believed they were saving Sylvarant they turned and fled the moment they were facing a man with a sword instead of one drugged unconscious. 

He let them go in favor of scrambling to Zelos’ side, wrapping his hand tight around the stump to try to slow the pulse of blood. “Zelos, you’ve got to cast Healing Stream,” he said frantically, grabbing his severed arm and pressing it to the stump, his words turning into a babble, “I can’t, I don’t have anything, you need to do this.”

Zelos pried open his eyes, but Lloyd clearly see on his face how agonizing it was for him to respond, “Can’t focus for that, Hunny,” then his eyes drifted down to Lloyd’s still-bare chest, the lovemarks peppered across it, and somehow managed to grimace out a smile, “No regrets, huh?”

Lloyd heard footsteps clambering up onto the dias behind him, tensing until he heard Linar’s horrified squeak and Aisha gasping. He was about to ignore them until a thought suddenly hit him and he whipped around to stare at Harley. “Heal him,” he demanded, more brusque than he would usually ever be with a friend.

Harley took a step backwards, looking startled and put on the spot. “What?”

“You’re a half-elf, right? _Heal him_.”

“I grew up surrounded by humans! Nobody ever taught me magic!” Harley protested, surprise turning into panic.

“ _Try_ ,” Lloyd begged, voice breaking on the short word. “ _Please,_ you’re the only one who might be able to. If you can just start it he can finish it.”

Aisha put a hand on Harley’s shoulder, pushing him forward with a sympathetic look on her face, “It can’t hurt to try,” she told him, and he finally took a harsh breath and stepped forward.

“Don’t put all your hope on this,” he warned, but only hesitated a moment more before gulping, putting one hand on the wounded stump and the other on the severed arm, and screwing up his eyes to concentrate.

For a long moment nothing seemed to happen, then slowly a warm glow started to form beneath his hands and hope rushed into Lloyd so strongly that he felt like he could choke on it. As he watched another glow began to pulse in time with it, from the crystal that had been so cruelly removed from Zelos’ body, and slowly spread through the skin until it met the spot where the two bloodied ends met and there grew brighter.

It made sense, Lloyd realized as his mind finally cleared enough to really let him think again, if the crystals were able to make a person immortal than why shouldn’t they be able to help keep the body in working order?

Before Lloyd’s eyes the skin knit back together, leaving a wide band of scar tissue in its place, and Zelos’ skin went from distressingly pale to regaining its color in spite of the blood that he’d lost remaining pooled around them. The pain faded from his face to be replaced by an almost comical look of surprise that he was going to be okay, and slowly he bent up his arm to see that it once again functioned as well as it ever had. 

At the feel of the movement Harley fell back with a yelp, eyes flying open to stare, clearly stunned, at Zelos’ healed arm and then down at his own hands. “I can heal?” he said slowly, then a smile crawled around his face as he whipped around to call over to Linar and Aisha, “Did you guys see that? I can use healing magic!”

“I could ask Professor Sage to give you lessons on using it,” Lloyd offered, as he helped Zelos sit up. Then he changed his mind and said firmly, “No, you three should pack up tonight and head for Palmacosta, that’s where she and Genis were the last time I heard, tell her you just found out you can heal and need help learning how to use it.”

The three friends glanced between each other then Aisha hesitantly asked, “Lloyd, what do you plan to do here?”

“I’m not doing anything other than getting Zelos the hell away from these people,” he said, but his voice turned colder as he added, “But then I’m going to tell the King of Tethe’alla the elders here tried to kill him thinking it would attack their cities. He can decide what needs to be done about them, and I wouldn’t want to see you guys here when he does.”

They all once more exchanged a glance than scurried down the stairs, apparently realizing that after what had happened that night they probably wouldn’t be able to convince him to look more kindly than that on the town that had tried to commit a human sacrifice each time he visited.

When he managed to get himself steadily to his feet Zelos finally looked down at Lloyd and said, “That really your plan? It could lead to war between our worlds, you know, and Sylvarant wouldn’t be the one to come out of it in one piece.”

“I don’t know,” Lloyd said tiredly, suddenly drained. “I don’t think most of the people here deserve it, but you could have died.” He grabbed Zelos in a tight embrace suddenly, a reversal of the surprise hugs Zelos tended to ensnare him in, “You could have died because I was dumb enough to think they’d actually let us have the whole day to look for a way out and let down my guard. When I heard you scream I couldn’t even _think_ , I was so scared.”

“Yeah,” Zelos said, raising a hand to one of the gleaming wings still shining at Lloyd’s back, “I can see it had quite an effect. Unless it was just the energizing power of my love that brought those back.”

Lloyd snorted, the stupid joke doing more to settle him than seeing Zelos healed had managed even though he knew, he _knew_ , that Zelos was only putting on a show of being okay. He couldn’t hide the way he was shaking beneath his light tone. “Yeah, it must have been that one,” he said, then pulled back to look at Zelos fully. “You know what I really want to do?”

“You’re half-dressed and I’m only wearing, what is this, a loincloth? So I have a thought or two once my blood’s replenished itself enough to be feasible,” Zelos suggested with a lecherous grin, then laughed when Lloyd swatted at him in response though the sound rang false, “Okay, okay, seriously, what’s the plan? Just no more cities where murdering tourists is a growth industry, please.”

“I just want to head to Luin, load my boat with supplies, and head out to sea so far that nobody else like that could ever find you until I stop having nightmares about what just happened. Which is going to be a really long time.”

Zelos’ smile softened into something genuine as he pulled him closer again, the trembling in his body even seeming to finally ease a little bit, “See, and that’s even a plan for showing me part of the world I haven’t seen before; never really been at sea. But I have to warn you, Hunny; you do you realize that you’re about to face the scorn and tears of all the beautiful women of the world when they find out that you trapped the most eligible bachelor alive on a ship after you’d seduced him away from them?”

“Hey! Just _who_ was the one doing the seducing there?” Lloyd shot back, even as he could not stop grinning against Zelos’ lips when he closed the space between them.

There were still hard times to come, he knew. Maybe Zelos wouldn’t be able to stay so light-hearted when they had to face the world and the men who’d attacked him again, which if they didn’t get moving soon could be sooner than they’d like. Maybe cramming themselves into a small boat with no other company except Noishe once they’d gathered him up would turn out to be a dumb thing to do when they’d only just shifted their relationship into something new. Still, standing in the warmth of Zelos’ arms Lloyd knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that everything would be alright.

Dwarven Vow number seven. Goodness and love would always win.


End file.
